Sep 14, 2022 - Dr. Michael S. Neiberg, Professor of History and Chair of War Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the United States Army War College, will serve as the 2022 Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lecturer on Monday, October 24, 2022.
Professor Neiberg will lecture twice. His first lecture, titled “Reconstructing Europe after World War I: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919,” will be at 2:00 p.m. in Union’s Carl Grant Events Center. At 7:15 p.m., Neiberg will talk about “Perilous Times: America’s Search for Security after the Fall of France in World War II” in Union’s G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
An award-winning historian, Neiberg has authored, coauthored, or edited 21 books on modern warfare, especially World Wars I and II. His most recent book, When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance, was published by Harvard University Press in 2021; it won a 2022 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History. In 2016, Neiberg received the Harry S. Truman Book Award for Potsdam: The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe (Basic Books, 2015). His book The Blood of Free Men: The Liberation of Paris, 1944 (Basic Books, 2012) earned him a Madigan Award for Excellence in Scholarship from the United States Army War College. The Wall Street Journal declared his Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of War in 1914, published in 2011 by Harvard University Press, to be one of the five best books ever written about the First World War. Dr. Neiberg has also received two Tomlinson Book Prizes from the World War I Historical Association, first in 2008 for The Second Battle of the Marne (University of Indiana Press, 2008) and then in 2016 for The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2016). Some other books he has authored are The Western Front (Amber Books, 2007), Warfare and Society in Europe, 1898 to the Present (Routledge, 2004), Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War (Brassey’s Press, 2003), and Warfare in World History (Routledge, 2001).
After earning his Ph.D. in history at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Neiberg taught at the United States Air Force Academy for several years. He moved to the University of Southern Mississippi in 2005 where he served as Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of War and Society until 2011. He has taught at the United States Army War College since then. Professor Neiberg has been recognized several times for teaching excellence, including an Outstanding Academy Educator Award while at the United States Air Force Academy. In addition, Dr. Neiberg is a Senior Fellow at the nonpartisan Foreign Policy Research Institute – an American think tank that focuses on geopolitics and international security.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lectureship Series. Previous lecturers have included: Pulitzer Prize winners; recipients of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing; winners of American Historical Association book prizes; Gilder-Lehman Lincoln Prize awardees; Bancroft Prize recipients; Jefferson Davis Award winners; and a George Washington Book Prize awardee.